Steve’s Stuff

Microsoft has released beta 2 of Windows Defender, the successor to Microsoft AntiSpyware (beta 1). It installed well on my machine, although I removed MS AntiSpyware first. Happily, neither the removal nor installation required a reboot.

Now, I’ve got a problem. Windows Defender will not update itself. It fails with an error 0×8024402c. Buzzing around through Microsoft’s site, it seems that this error is related to Windows Update. My current theory is that because my PC is set to update through a WSUS server, Defender is looking in the wrong place for its updates.

Update: Feb 22:

For any folks using WSUS, you must add “definition updates” to the types of things that are synchronized, then set “definition updates” to “automatic install” to have them pushed out to clients. Now that we understand this, we’ve put Windows Defender on several computers on the LAN and it seems to be working well.

Windows Defender, WSUS

Yahoo has release AJAX libraries and gadgets (called patterns) under an OSS license. These will find their way into the new CCIM website.

Yahoo, AJAX

According EFF: Breaking News

Google today announced a new “feature” of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new “Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.

This is yet another good reason to use the Copernic Desktop search.

Google, Copernic, EFF

CNET is reporting

IBM and several other software companies have proposed an open-source project to simplify development tools for AJAX-style Web development.

Called Open Ajax, the proposed open-source project will be based on IBM-donated code designed to let software developers use the Eclipse development tool to write Web applications using AJAX.

This is good news. AJAX is complex and there needs to be an easy, widely used framework for development. I hope it supports PHP.

AJAX, IBM